A Grand Rendition of Beethoven. It Takes Up a Million Square Feet, in Fact.

ELLENVILLE, N.Y. — Roger Baker walked across Beethoven’s hair, down to the left eye and over to the right eye.

There is no question that Ludwig van Beethoven was a larger-than-life figure, one of the greatest composers of all time. And here, at the edge of the Catskills, Beethoven is very big indeed.

The canvas is a huge field where cows once grazed. The artist is a man who was inspired while listening to Beethoven’s piano sonatas on long-playing records that he found at a yard sale. His tools include four tractors.

“Beethoven’s got great hair — what can I tell you?” said Mr. Baker, who is a commercial artist and sculptor when he is not creating colossal portraits in grass. “His hair is timeless. It was good back then, and it would go good today. Great image. When you see a picture of Beethoven, you just know who it is. You look at that scowling face, you think, dun-dun-dun-DUH.” There was no mistaking the famous four-note opening of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 (Op. 67), even as he insisted he could not carry a tune.

The likeness in the grass is familiar, based on a painting of Beethoven in his late 40s — middle age, according to the calendar; late period, according to the opus numbers. But Mr. Baker’s Beethoven differs from the painting. This Beethoven’s complexion is blemished by woodchuck holes. His right shoulder is cut off by a creek.

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A field cut by Roger Baker to look like the motorcycle builder Larry Desmedt, better known as Indian Larry.Credit...Anthony Puopolo

And Beethoven’s prominent forehead? “A great place to land a helicopter,” Mr. Baker said, after explaining that the height of the portrait is more than 1,000 feet and that it includes only Beethoven’s head and shoulders.

Mr. Baker sees Beethoven’s lapel as a great place for a grand piano. A 5-foot-8-inch Yamaha will be trucked in on Monday. A harp arrived over the weekend for a moonlit performance of the “Moonlight” Sonata by Victoria Drake. A 40-voice choir from Ellenville Middle School will sing an arrangement of “Ode to Joy” from Symphony No. 9 (Op. 125) on Monday. The choir’s music teacher, Linda Gillette, will accompany them.

Mr. Baker has been called a da Vinci of the lawn mower, an El Greco of the grass. He has done large-form cuttings of the Statue of Liberty, Albert Einstein, Jimi Hendrix, Elvis Presley and the motorcycle builder and biker Larry Desmedt, better known as Indian Larry. He also snipped and trimmed an 850,000-square-foot Purple Heart medal.

Beethoven, a high-culture idol, was a departure for Mr. Baker, who said he had never attended a classical-music concert. He dabbled with the clarinet and the saxophone when he was growing up on the Jersey Shore. But painting beckoned after high school.

Now 62, he is a happy straggler when it comes to technology. He still has a flip phone, and he has never — yes, never — used Google. His main research tool is the World Book Encyclopedia, a 19-volume set from 1956 (those seeking further explanation of what that is can look it up on Google).

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Mr. Baker’s plan for the field, with a grid laid over Beethoven’s image.Credit...Roger Baker

That was where he found the image of Beethoven that he adapted for the field. As for the LPs at the yard sale — recordings of the pianist Alfred Brendel — “I paid five bucks for them,” he said.

The records were in perfect condition, he said, and he played them over and over, carefully lowering the needle to avoid scratching the old vinyl surfaces. Before he settled on Beethoven, he considered other famous musicians who happened to have impressive hair: Leonard Bernstein, Luciano Pavarotti, Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt, even Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Mr. Baker pulled Volume 11, the “M” volume of the World Book, off a shelf and read up on Mozart. He was unimpressed. “Mozart didn’t have the verve,” Mr. Baker said. “I look at the portrait of Beethoven and think, ‘dun-dun-dun-DUH.’ Mozart was just kind of standing there.”

So Beethoven it was, and not just the portrait. He sketched the nine letters of the composer’s family name below the image. He decided ordinary-looking letters were not enough, so he copied Beethoven’s signature. The “B” is more than 90 feet tall. And he got permission to use the field rent-free — it is owned by friends, he said.

“The field dictated the size of the portrait,” Mr. Baker said. “When I do fields, I have to count square feet. Acres, it doesn’t sound as great.” Beethoven covers about a million square feet. That works out to 23 acres, given the shape of the field.

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Mr. Baker cut an 850,000-square-foot Purple Heart medal into the grass at a park in Hamptonburgh, N.Y., in 2007.Credit...Anthony Puopolo

Mr. Baker figured out a grid system, dividing the field into 100-foot-by-100-foot squares. He subdivided each square into 10-by-10 chunks and waded into the grass, carrying a 3-foot-by-4-foot mock-up.

He planted orange flags, some to mark off squares, some to warn of woodchuck holes. He and his mowing crew assigned nicknames to features of Beethoven’s face that, in extra-large scale, look more like land formations on a map — “Madagascar” for a piece of the collar that had the shape of the island off Africa, “Thousand Islands” for the cravat.

The Beethoven biographer Jan Swafford wrote that when he pictured Beethoven at work, he heard “the scratch of a quill pen on lined music paper.” Mr. Baker hears the guttural sound of five grass-cutting machines — “my array of brushes,” he called them. He also described them as “erasers,” but not the kind that removes all traces of whatever was on the surface. “We’re not getting rid of the grass,” he said, “we’re just making it lower.” Blade by blade.

The machines were lined up at the edge of the field, waiting to give Beethoven’s chin a close shave or to add a bit of shadow to his cheek. The smallest was a push mower (for “narrow detail,” Mr. Baker explained). Next was a riding mower (“I use that to outline”). A big blue tractor sat alongside a smaller orange one (for gradations).

North of Beethoven’s mouth, he was joined by Akiko Sasaki, a pianist who heard about the project from a violinist Mr. Baker had recruited, Akiko Kamigawara. “She said he’s going to cut Beethoven into the grass,” recalled Ms. Sasaki, who has a master’s degree from the Manhattan School of Music and gave her solo debut recital at Carnegie Hall in 2006. “The way she said it, I was like, What? I didn’t get it.”

Mr. Baker, standing in the giant “B” of Beethoven’s signature, said he had heard that before. He countered by saying that the project was not so far-fetched.